Teeing off or Showing off?

Cdr Shrikumar Sangiah (retd)

Picture this. A mild sun warms the golf course, a gentle breeze blows, and lush, manicured fairways and greens stretch into the distance. A military officer, in logo-emblazoned golf attire, lines up to swing a golf club with the gravitas of a general inspecting a parade. The ball slices into a bunker, but it does not matter—the real goal was staging a show, not the scorecard.

The golf course is a stage for a pantomime of sophistication, complete with exaggerated etiquette and anecdotes about ‘the time I played with that general or that admiral.’ Golf, with its colonial pedigree and restricted access, is seen to offer a ticket to an imagined aristocracy to which officers are all too eager to belong.

In India, golf has become the unofficial sport of military officers, often less for the love of the game and more for its starring role in the theatre of elitism. The accoutrements are part of the show—Titleist clubs, monogrammed golf bags, and sunglasses perched just so. It is less about playing well and more about looking the part. The scorecard, after all, is secondary to the Instagram/Facebook post captioned: #FairwayLife.

This enthusiasm for golf, among officers, makes it an interesting subject for psychoanalytical study. At its core, the preference for golf among service officers reflects deep-seated psychological motivations tied to status, identity, and prestige signalling. Deconstructing the phenomenon, one finds that while officers pretend to chase birdies they are actually chasing ‘status’— turning themselves into parodies of privilege with their affected mannerisms and faux swagger.

It is hard not to chuckle at the sight of officers earnestly polishing their clubs as if they were medals won for wartime valour or at the sight of them strutting across the fairways with an air of self-congratulation. There is something quite tragi-comic about men and women, trained for the rigours of military service, reducing themselves to stereotypes of snobbery through a sport that demands very little athleticism.

The performative elitism, behind the facade of sport, with affected accents and animated debates over handicaps is clearly less about enjoying physical activity and more about signalling status. Why not an Instagram/Facebook post about kicking a football with the men or a vigorous game of badminton in the officers’ mess? Simple, those sports lack the snooty sheen of golf, accessible as they are to the hoi polloi.

In India, where social stratification is deeply entrenched, golf serves as a marker for separating the elite from the masses. Psychologically, individuals in hierarchical societies are driven by the need to establish and maintain social dominance. In such societies, people derive an elevated sense of self from their membership in prestigious groups. For service officers, golf serves as a gateway to an exclusive social circle, reinforcing their identity as part of the elite.

The officer-golfers would also have you believe that being skilled at golf is a direct reflection of their leadership or even of their military prowess—a delusion that is as comical as it is misguided. The golf course is not a battlefield; it is a stage for posturing, where the real competition is in flaunting the priciest putter or boastful name-dropping.

The disapproval here isn’t of golf itself—swing away for the joy it brings you—but of the cringe-worthy affectations that turn officers into caricatures and of the scramble for a false sense of sophistication. It is a charade, where the pursuit of prestige trumps authenticity.

An admission. I, too, am occasionally lured by the siren song of the fairway. Then, I too don the polo shirt and pull out the overpriced driver while secretly praying for the ball to not end up in the bunker or for the caddy to not be silently judging my swing (I am certain he is). So, even as I poke fun at golf-obsessed fellow officers, I am also mocking myself—a fellow fool in this circus. But the admission and self-awareness do not make the charade any less absurd, and it is only appropriate that one steps back and examines why golf has become the military officers’ favourite tool in their quest for sophistication.

The Colonial Hangover

Golf’s grip on India’s defence officers is no accident. It is a sport steeped in colonial baggage, a relic of British officers hitting balls across the Raj’s sprawling golf courses. Not surprisingly therefore, the